Aloha !

Obie had been bragging to fans how he'd been digging deep into the archives to find all these old recordings. Both on Backstage and Jovitalk people got excited, finally expecting the live release the band had never released.

Once One Wild Night was released there were 11 songs on there which had already been on previous releases. 4 songs were lifted from the Crush DVD, 2 off an official fanclub release and then there were 5 b-sides crammed on there. Then there's the insane amount of edits just to be able to fit all those songs on 1 disc. Prayer, Saturday Night, In & Out Of Love, Something For The Pain and Bad Medicine were all shortened. I think Something To Believe In was as well, but I'm not sure, it's been too long since I've heard the album. A casual listener won't hear it but someone who knows Bon Jovi live versions by heart does.

Back in 2001 Obie gave "hilarious" answers to fans asking questions. When someone asked "How do you feel the response to the live album has been" he said "Everyone likes it apart from a few snobs from that other messageboard". He mentioned this when talking to fans, saying "we" were impossible to please. Meanwhile, on Backstage every negative thread was immidiately deleted so it'd look like everyone loved it. Most of these supposed die hards on Backstage had no idea what was out there. Some people from Jovitalk posted there as well and said a lot was already out there. Backstage got light of this and eventually some people on there mentioned things like "Well I'm glad we got a live album but it could've been better". Obie talked to fans before shows as well and heard about the critisism and always dismissed this as needless. "Just be happy with what you got". But what we got really was only a fully unedited version of Just Older from Toronto. But Just Older had been released on the Crush DVD, as a b-side on the Crush bonus disc and as a b-side from New York City. There was nothing new on that album and Obie knew it too. He just expected to get away with it and looked like a ****ing moron. He'd just gotten used to all the adoration from fans and it turned out he couldn't deliver.

When he started work on the box set he did a lot more of investigating asking fans if they'd heard song this or song that to make sure it'd be full of songs that weren't in circulation already. It's how some song titles were eventually leaked to see if people would respond with "But we've already got that one!". It's also the major reason why there's no stuff from the eighties on there. Most of it is already out there.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan